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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

#46: The Distressing Implications Behind “Hepler Mode”

A long
time ago (at least 350 internet years, which translates to around one
year ago on October 2011), a writer at Bioware named Jennifer Hepler
was the object of immense
controversy. At the time of this incident, one
statement is particular was brought to light
that she had made six years ago: She had told interviewers that she
wished that developers would more often include more “casual”
difficulties for people like her that do not necessarily enjoy
playing video games, but like to be engaged in a good story, in which
the gameplay sections are skipped in order to go from dialogue to
dialogue. Though at first I was in support of this “Hepler Mode,”
in time I began to change my mind. This is not to say that I am
against making easier difficulties for new players. In fact, quite
the opposite is true in that regards. In the past, I have been vocal
in my support of simplifying systems and allowing for adjustable
difficulties to facilitate a variety of player skill levels. No, the
problems with this “Story” mode are related to the underlying
assumptions that are implied by the idea.

The fact
that this has even come up in discussion is proof of a fundamentally
poor design principal which is prevalent in the gaming industry (and
honest probably has been for quite some time), which is that story
and gameplay can and should be allowed to exist separately. This line
of thinking is prevalent in video games of all types, from shooters
like Call of Duty, to open-world games like inFamous, and even
Western-style RPGs like Mass Effect, which have choice and
consequence as major themes and mechanics. In many of these games,
there is a clear divide between the moments where the player is
engaged in the story and is advancing the plot and the other moments
that consist of mostly shooting mooks or other gameplay elements.
These sections where the game is nothing but intense combat seem to
have no real impact on the outcome of the events and exist merely to
extend the length of the game. Mass Effect is a clear example of this
in action. In every Mass Effect game (and many other Bioware games if
what I am told is true), despite the choices the player makes and the
changes to the overall timeline as a result of these choices, the
player will always play through the same levels with the same
enemies. The only thing that the player can do to change up these
encounters is to play as a different class and/or bring different
squadmates along. The opposite of this phenomenon is also true. No
matter what class the player chooses, who they bring on missions, and
what they do during combat scenarios, the story will never be
affected by it. Each of these two sections of the game exist, for all
intent and purposes, independently of the other. This is not how
games should be designed. The gameplay and the story should exist to
supplement each other. They should be so entwined as to be nearly
inseparable. Interaction and choice are the biggest strengths of the
medium. In order to use it to most effective tell a tale, designers
need to keep this in mind. Spec Ops: The Line is a fantastic example
of that (which will be left vague because of spoilers).

The
other error in the underlying assumptions of “Hepler Mode” is the
question of who this kind of mode would be aiming for marketing-wise.
What I mean by that is that Jennifer Hepler notes that one of the
reasons this kind of mode of play would be needed is that there are
people out there that do not like video games, yet are interested in
a good story. Ignoring whatever opinion you may have of Hepler, why
would a game developer or publisher even make an attempt to capture a
market that literally has no interest in their products? What would
be gained from that? Any interest this non-gamer market would have in
video games would be superficial at best. This is not the same thing
as attracting people who may have an interest in games, but are put
off by the (admittedly high) barriers of entry like consoles/PCs,
price of games, and complicated control schemes aimed at those
familiar with other games. That makes sense. What does not make sense
is marketing to people that literally have no interest in the medium
at all. Doing so is a recipe for disaster and one of the easiest ways
a developer can piss away the good will of its fans. If the target
demographic has no interest in playing games, then the odds are that
they will not even know the publisher is marketing to them, let alone
have any interest in the games being marketed.

This
problem with “Hepler Mode” is not that it is an unsound concept,
but rather that it should not be. If the combat system wears down
most players so much that the vast majority of them are asking to
skip it entirely, then it may be a good idea to revamp the systems of
the game to make it more entertaining. It is up to designers to make
tough calls like editing, revising, and even removing features or
parts of levels in order to improve the overall experience because
that is what they are paid to do. The gameplay is just as much a part
of the experience as the storyline. To give players the option to
skip gameplay is to concede the video games are nothing more than
movies with playable segments in between shots. That is not
acceptable! It goes against the very strengths of the medium. Games
are at their best when they embrace their nature as interactive media
and utilized it to the fullest. While this is an old issue, it is
still an important one nonetheless and I hope that lessons were
learned from it.

11 comments:

The real red flag for me is "for those who want to focus on good stories." How can I be delicate with this? Writing in video games generally sucks.

I think there are some good writing and stories in video games, but they were largely tied to design and mechanics that I liked anyway. If you strip away all the stuff that falls under gameplay and just hold up the stories and writing of video games on their own, they fall hopelessly short in comparison to other mediums.

The big problem is that video games keep trying to mimic Hollywood blockbusters instead of developing their own narrative language. Then they fall into the spectacle=story trap that a lot of AAA games keep falling into.

In particular, games are often terrible at one aspect of storytelling, that is pacing. Even Rockstar, who have some of the best writing suffer this. Red Dead Redemption(one of my all time favorites) kills all of its narrative momentum dead as soon as you get to Mexico. The game would have been much stronger had Mexico been cut.

I don't think storytelling in video games is strong enough right now to be held up on its own. The problem is with story telling itself. Video games shouldn't be telling you a story, you should be experiencing one in real time as it happens to you through your avatar.

Even if the gameplay is executed well and doesn't interfere with or distract from the story, I still think "Hepler Mode" isn't an entirely bad idea. After all, the cutscenes are undoubtedly vital to the story... But they're skippable. Why shouldn't gameplay segments be skippable too?

Also, I think when Hepler said that "there are people out there that do not like video games, yet are interested in a good story," I think what she meant is that there are people who don't like shooters, who are interested in the story and lore in Mass Effect. And I think that's a fair point that deserves to be addressed.

My point wasn't that it is a bad idea. Giving the way developers build their games (and Bioware is particularly guilty of this), games are mostly just shooty bits with plot points between them. If you like story, might as well skip the gameplay. If you like gameplay, might as well skip the story.

My problem with that is that this shouldn't be the case. Gameplay and story should be woven together so that they complement and supplement the other. In that sense, you would need both in order to have the complete package. It's more of an indication of a major pet peeve I have with the industry.

And to be fair, this problem HARDLY originates with Hepler. This has been an issue pretty much since games were able to tell stories. A used this as an example to express my grievances with the idea.

I agree that that's a serious problem with videogame storytelling at the moment (believe me, I've talked about it quite a bit myself in the past), but even if that were fixed and story and gameplay were perfectly intertwined, it would still make sense to me if each individual segment was skippable, for the same reason that it's possible to skip scenes on a DVD.

Thinking more about it, I can imagine many games would suffer from gamers wanting to skip through parts that are important to the story because they find those segments "boring," so maybe each section could become skippable after you've completed it once?

I suppose Half-Life 2 is the closest we've seen to that - the game is separated into "chapters," and when you start a new game you can begin at whatever chapter you want.

I'll say that we already have some sort of 'Helper mode' via difficulty setting. Is this section too hard or tedious, turn it too easy and cruise through. If people just want to experience the story then what's stopping them from watching it on youtube and save £40/$60?